Now I know how a horse feels!

On Friday after work I went home and took a nap. After my little cat nap, which I never do, I got up and fed the horses and swept mopped the floors. We had purchased a Tilapia dinner from Trader Joes that I decided to cook it for dinner. I started to eat when the cramps started. They were pretty intense. They went on till about 10 pm when I finally went to my husband and said "Take me to the the ER". We had to go to Chico because Oroville's ER is a death trap literally. Another story for another day. It takes 25 minutes to get there but on Friday it only took about 15, my husband was really worried and his driving reflected it. I got to the ER room and it was full. I had to sit and wait. I waited for an hour and a half before they admitted me. I told them over and over again that I was having severe cramping but because my blood levels were so low they just knew that I was bleeding internally somewhere! I went through all the tests they asked me too and still they were not believing me that it didn't have anything to do with my iron levels. My surgeon came in and within 5 minutes told me what was going on and had me off to surgery. He said that a small piece if my bowel had gotten caught in the loop of another piece cutting off the blood flow,causing my symptoms and pain. My first thought was... crap I just had colic surgery. I had a bout of colic. Now I know first hand how it feels and let me tell you... IT HURTS, Probably the most intensive pain I have ever experienced - including child birth. Next time you horse has a gut ache or anything like that.... cut him or her some slack. I can now understand how fast it comes on and how really painfully it is.

Things are getting back to normal but I really wanted to show the first weekend in April and the doc isn't being very cooperative. I know better than to do anything stupid, but it won't stop me from asking. Training lady is riding semper for me till I am 100% back in the saddle which is a really good thing.

$7 in the hole!

Surprise! I got a check in the mail from our second show! How funny. I never gave much thought as to where I placed in the overall scheme of things at the horse show. I was just trying to get a better score than my last show - which I did. I placed 4th and got a check for $13 - it cost me $20 to enter the class! I guess $13 is better than a sharp stick in the eye! So I spent my first winnings on this picture.

Things - they are a changin'

I guess what I really mean to say is that life is changing.
When I started riding again after my 25 year hiatus, I made new friends. Trail riding buddies. It was great, we would get together a couple of times a week and hit the trials. We would come back to the trailers and have a bite to eat and a cold drink, chat and plan our next trail ride. It was great - for awhile. Then I started to want more from my horse and myself. The show ring was calling. I had always enjoyed showing but knew that I didn't want to show halter, western pleasure, trail, etc. I had been dreaming of doing working cowhorse and reining. Instead of just going for it, I chose to try Trail Trials instead. My thought process was that I had a great trail horse and I was going to just take the Trail Trial world by storm! Not. Since that didn't work out I turned my focus to reining. I still was trail riding some with my friends but not near as much. My trail riding buddies were all very supportive and encouraging but the more that I worked towards my goals, the less and less phone calls I got to go for trail rides. I don't think I went trail riding more than three times last summer. I don't hear much from my trail riding buddies anymore. When I see them we spend a lot of time chatting and catching up and we talk about trail riding together again, but it never materializes. I had made new friends at the boarding facility and we were kind of all on the same page. I was slowly working towards reining and they each had goals of there own that didn't include going down the same trail a couple times a week. We would ride in the arena, drink beer, visit and hang out at the barn. Life was pretty good. Then I started to get that angst again to move forward. I made the decision to "shit or get off the pot" and sent Semper back to TL. It was tough not to have my favorite buddy around. He was with her for almost 6 months and it darned near killed me. In the end it was totally worth it. Now I had a nearly finished reining horse and was even closer to my goal of going back into the show ring. The only thing at that point that was holding me back was my weight. I made the decision to have surgery and my barn buddies were totally 100% supportive. I don't know if I would have had such a positive experience without the support of my barn buddies. But with surgery came big, huge, changes in my life. First off, I don't drink alcohol anymore. A lot of my social life evolved around having a drink or two or ten. And eating out - food, food, food. That all ended pretty abruptly. It has been almost a year since I had surgery, one of my barn buddies moved Washington and is pregnant (talk about life changing) and I have moved to a new barn. My other barn buddy moved with me. Her life is changing too. She is divorced, just moved out on her own, and is ready to find that someone special in her life. I am so happy for both of them. Jen is going to have a baby! Laura is moving forward and getting her life back on track. We still talk almost everyday. Jen and I text back and forth at least every other day or two.

Life is changing again for me too. Not sure what to do or that I even need to do anything. I am showing and more focused than ever. I seem to be spending more and more time by myself, on my own. My husband is hunting and fishing a lot, my daughters are out on there own, my son is 18 and all that implies! I am not complaining just pondering what other changes are coming up, what new friends I will make, and where this is all going to lead.

My second horse show

Saturday was my second horse show. It was at the barn where I board so we had the home field advantage. We warmed up and Semper was on, on, on. He was just floating around, very responsive and willing. I entered 3 classes. I wanted to enter at least one class to school in. The rookie class was first and we started out really nicely until I asked for my first lead change. He kicked out so hard at my spur, big jerk, that I just took him two handed and schooled the rest of the pattern. Kicking out is a 5 point deduction. Kind of pointless to go on with a pattern after that! TL had me immediately take him out to the warm up area and just push him all over the place. Move his hip, move his shoulders, anything that required me putting leg on him. Of course he knew he was in trouble and never kicked out again, but we did make him work more than he wanted to. The next class was Green Reiner and we did a nice pattern. Our stops still need work but for the most part he did alright. We finished the pattern and got a 67 which is 2 points higher than our last show. I was happy with that. It is all about moving forward baby! The last class was the Dumb as Dirt class and boy did I live up to that name! The pattern started with turnarounds and I was so focused on doing good turnaround that I forgot to count! After the first one, I was thinking "shit! I don't know how many I have done!" There is that sinking feeling again. I did 5 rotations and that nabbed me a zero. But the rest of the pattern was very nice and the lead changes were beautiful. I did take too many steps back in the roll back and that would have nabbed me a zero on top the of the zero I already had. I got some nice compliments from people on how nice Semper and I looked and worked together and that is always nice to hear.

This weekend we are showing again. Not really at a horse show - we are performing at a horse show judging day for the FFA judging team. We will run a pattern and the FFA members will judge our run and give reasons to the judges to evaluate. It should be pretty low key and hopefully I won't make any pattern mishaps.

I figure that I am going to have to make each mistake once. As long as I only make them once I can live with that.